The Water Mirror (7 page)

“You have kindled strife among the students. And you have led others
to take sides. If Eft hadn't intervened, Junipa, Boro, and Tiziano would have had
to choose for one of you.” An angry spark appeared in the old man's eyes, so
that he now seemed stern and unapproachable. “I cannot allow my apprentices to be
divided. What I insist on is cooperation and avoidance of all unnecessary conflicts.
Magic mirrors require a certain harmony in order to mature into what they are. In an
atmosphere of hostility a shadow is laid over the glass that will make it grow
blind.”

Merle had the feeling that he was making it up. He wanted to talk them
into feeling guilty. It would have suited that purpose better if he hadn't
referred so plainly to “unnecessary conflicts”: After all, it had been the
childish quarrel between him and Umberto in the first place that caused this whole
upset.

Sooner or later it would have come to a break between her and Dario
anyhow, she'd felt that on the very first day. She surmised that Arcimboldo had
foreseen it too. Did he regret taking her from the orphanage? Would she have to go back
to the dirt and the poverty now?

Despite her fears, no feelings of guilt troubled her. Dario was a whining
coward, as he'd just demonstrated twice: once when he went for Serafin with the
knife, and
the second time when he'd taken cover behind the
defenseless Junipa. He'd richly deserved his box on the ear and, if it had been up
to her, a good beating right afterward.

Clearly Arcimboldo saw it very similarly. “Dario,” he said,
“for your unworthy and unrestrained behavior you will clean the workshop by
yourself. I don't want to find one single spot of paint tomorrow morning early.
Understand?”

“And what about her?” Dario growled, pointing angrily at
Merle.

“Did you understand me?” Arcimboldo asked once more, his bushy
eyebrows drawing together like two thunderclouds.

Dario lowered his head, though Merle did not miss the hateful look he sent
her secretly. “Yes, Master.”

“Dario will need a quantity of water. Therefore, you, Merle, will
get ten pails full from the well, carry them upstairs, and take them to the workshop.
That will be your punishment.”

“But Master—,” Dario flared.

Arcimboldo cut him short. “You have shamed us all by your behavior,
Dario. I know you are rash and hot-tempered, but you are also my best student, and
therefore I intend to let it go at this. As far as Merle is concerned, she has only been
here for two weeks and must first get used to the fact that here, unlike the orphanage,
a dispute
is not settled with fists. Have I expressed myself clearly
enough?”

Both bowed and said in unison, “Yes, Master.”

“Any objections?”

“No, Master.”

“So be it.” With a wave, he indicated that they could go.

Outside the door of the library Merle and Dario exchanged black looks,
then each turned to the appointed task. While Dario prepared to remove the residues of
the paint attack in the workshop, Merle ran down into the courtyard. Beside the back
door a dozen wooden pails sat lined up. She snatched up the first one and went to the
well.

Strange creatures were carved in the stone of the wall around the well,
fantastic creatures with cat's eyes, Medusa heads, and reptilian tails. They were
strung out in a stiff procession around the well. At their head went a creature, half
human, half shark, with arms whose elbows pointed in the wrong direction; in its hands
it carried a human head.

The metal lid was heavy. Merle succeeded in opening it only with groaning
and straining. Below, there was nothing but blackness. Way deep, deep down, she saw a
shimmer of light, the reflection of the sky over the courtyard.

She turned around and looked up. The view was only a little different from
the one inside of the well: The walls of the old houses rose up around the courtyard
like the
stone wall of the well. Perhaps the water wasn't so
far down as she'd thought. The reflection of the courtyard added that much more
height, and so the well shaft seemed to be more than double its actual length. It would
be less trouble to climb down to the surface than Merle had thought—at least now
she could see metal handholds going down the inside of the well into the abyss. What
could it be that Eft kept doing down there?

Merle tied the bucket to the long rope lying ready beside the well and let
it down. The wood scraped against the stone of the wall as it went. The sound
reverberated in the depths and rose up distorted into the daylight. Except for Merle
there was no one else in the courtyard. The scraping of the bucket was thrown back by
the facades of the surrounding houses, and now it almost sounded like whispers murmuring
down from the gaping windows of the buildings. The voices of all those who no longer
lived here. Ghost whispers.

Merle couldn't see when the bucket reached the surface. It was too
dark down there. But she did see that suddenly the reflection of the sky in the depths
was set in motion; the bucket was probably just now dipping into the water. Only it was
strange that she felt no slackening of the pull and also that the scraping of the bucket
on the stone wall sounded unchanged. If it wasn't the bucket that stirred the
surface of the water, what was it?

She'd scarcely framed the question when something
appeared down there. A head. It was much too far away for her to be able to make
out the details, and yet she was certain that dark eyes were looking up at her.

In her fright Merle let go of the rope and took a step backward. The rope
whizzed over the well wall into the depths. It would have been lost, together with the
bucket, had not a hand unexpectedly grabbed it.

Eft's hand.

Merle hadn't noticed the housekeeper walking up to her in the
courtyard. Eft had grabbed the end of the rope just in time and was now pulling the
bucket up into the daylight.

“Thank you,” Merle stammered. “That was clumsy of
me.”

“What did you see?” asked Eft behind her half mask.

“Nothing.”

“Please don't lie to me.”

Merle hesitated. Eft was still busy pulling up the bucket. Instinctively
Merle had a fleeting impulse to turn around and run away. She would have done that a few
weeks ago in the orphanage. Here, however, she was reluctant to demean herself. She had
done nothing wrong or forbidden.

“There was something down there.”

“Oh?”

“A face.”

The housekeeper pulled the full bucket over the edge
and placed it on the wall. Water sloshed over the edge and ran down on the
grimacing faces of the stone reliefs.

“So, a face. And you are quite sure?” With a sigh Eft answered
her own question. “Of course you are.”

“I saw it.” Merle didn't quite know how she should
behave. The housekeeper seemed uncanny to her, but she felt no real fear of her. Rather,
a kind of uneasiness at the way she looked over the edge of her mask and seemed to read
Merle's thoughts from each movement, each tiny hesitation.

“You've already seen something before, haven't
you?” Eft was leaning against the rim of the well. “The other night, for
example.”

There was no point in lying. “I heard the sound of the cover. And
then I saw you climbing into the well.”

“Did you tell anyone about it?”

“No,” she lied, in order not to draw Junipa into it.

Eft ran her hand through her hair and sighed deeply. “Merle, I have
to explain some things to you.”

“If you want to.”

“You aren't like the other apprentices,” said the
housekeeper. Was that a smile in her eyes? “Not like Dario. You can handle the
truth.”

Merle stepped closer to Eft, until she would only have needed to stretch
out her hand to touch the mask with the red lips. “You want to trust me with a
secret?”

“If you are ready for it.”

“But you don't know me at all.”

“Perhaps better than you think.”

Merle didn't understand what Eft meant by that. Her curiosity was
awakened now, and she wondered if that wasn't precisely what Eft intended. The
more interested Merle was, the more deeply she would be drawn into the business, and the
more Eft could trust her.

“Come with me,” the housekeeper said, and she went from the
well to the back door of an empty house. The entrance wasn't locked, and after Eft
had pushed the door open, they came into a small hallway. Apparently it was the former
servants' entrance to the palazzo.

They went past an abandoned kitchen and an empty storeroom, until they
came to a short flight of stairs going down—unusual in a city whose houses were
built on pilings and only rarely had cellars under them.

A little later Merle realized that Eft had led her to an underground boat
landing. A walkway ran alongside a water channel, which disappeared into semicircular
tunnels on both sides. At one time goods were loaded onto boats here. It smelled
brackish, the air tasted of algae and mold.

“Why don't you go into the water this way?” Merle
asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You climb into the well because you want to get somewhere through
it. Of course, there could be a secret passageway branching off the well shaft, but I
don't
believe that. I think that it's the water itself
that draws you.” She paused briefly and then added, “You're a mermaid,
aren't you?”

If Eft was surprised, she didn't show it. Merle understood very well
what she was saying—and also how unreasonable it was, basically. Eft had legs,
well-shaped human legs, utterly in contrast to all known mermaids, whose hips transmuted
into a broad fish tail.

Eft reached both hands behind her head and carefully took down the mask
that covered the lower half of her face day and night.

“You aren't afraid of me, are you?” she asked with her
broad mouth, whose corners ended a finger's breadth in front of her ears. She had
no lips, but when she spoke the folds of skin pulled back and exposed a mouth of several
rows of small, sharp teeth.

“No,” Merle replied, and it was the truth.

“That's good.”

“Will you tell me?”

“What would you like to know?”

“Why you don't take this way here, if you go at night to meet
with other mermaids. Why do you run the risk of someone seeing you when you climb into
the well?”

Eft's eyes narrowed, which in a human had the effect of an unspoken
threat, but with her it was only an expression of distaste. “Because the water is
polluted. It's the same in all the canals of the city. It's poisonous, it
kills us. That's why so few of us come willingly to Venice.
The water of the canals kills us, stealthily, but with absolute certainty.”

“The mermaids pulling the boats—”

“Will die. Any of us caught by you humans and caged or misused for
your races will die. The poison in the water first corrodes the skin and then the mind.
Not even the Flowing Queen can protect us from it.”

Merle stood silent with horror. All the people who kept mermaids for fun,
like house pets, were murderers. Some might even know what the imprisonment in the
canals did to the mermaids.

Ashamed, she looked Eft in the eye. She had trouble bringing out any sound
at all. “I've never caught a mermaid.”

Eft smiled, showing her needle-sharp teeth. “I know that. I can feel
it. You have been touched by the Flowing Queen.”

“I?”

“Didn't they fish you out of the water when you were a
newborn?”

“You were listening to me and Junipa that first night in our
room.” With anyone else she would have been indignant, but in Eft's case it
didn't seem important.

“I listened,” the mermaid admitted. “And because I know
your secret, I will reveal mine to you. That's only fair. And so, as I will talk
to no one about your secret, you will keep silent about mine.”

Merle nodded. “How did you mean that
before—that the Flowing Queen has touched me?”

“You were set out on the canals. That happens to many children. But
extremely few survive. Most drown. But you were found. The current carried you. That can
only mean that the Flowing Queen adopted you.”

To Merle's ears it sounded as though Eft had been there, so strong
was the conviction resonating in her words. It was obvious that the mermaids revered the
Flowing Queen as a goddess. Merle spun the thought further and got goose bumps: What if
the Flowing Queen wasn't protecting the people of the lagoon at all? After all,
the mermaids were creatures of the water, and if you were to believe some theories, the
queen
was
the water. An incomprehensible power of the sea.

“What is the Flowing Queen?” She had no real hope that Eft
knew the answer to this question.

“If it was ever known, it's long forgotten,” replied the
mermaid softly. “The way you and I and the Queen herself will one day be
forgotten.”

“But the Flowing Queen is revered by all. Everyone in Venice loves
her. She has saved us all. No one can ever forget that.”

Eft left it with a silent shrug of her shoulders, but Merle was very much
aware that she was of a different opinion. The mermaid pointed to a slender gondola
lying moored on the black water. It looked as if it were
floating in
nothing, so smooth and dark was the surface around it.

“Down into that?” Merle asked.

Eft nodded.

“And then?”

“I want to show you something.”

“Will we be gone long?”

“An hour at most.”

“Arcimboldo will punish me. He told me to take the
buckets—”

“Already done.” Eft smiled. “He told me what he had in
mind for you. I've already put ten full buckets in the workshop.”